War of the sparrows....

Ok, I know what you're thinking, you thought the title would say, "Golden Week, Part 2". Well, i decided to change it, but I'll still talk about Golden Week. However, first I shall detail this great war of the sparrows. Sunrise here in Japan is about 5:30AM here or so, the sparrows start their annoying chatter, right outside my window at about 5:35AM. This isn't just 1 or 2 sparrows, no, this is like a small flock of them. They all fight constantly with each other in the most annoying sound known to a sleeping person with exception to maybe a woodpecker. However, woodpeckers are few and far in between, and I'm pretty sure there's none in Japan. These sparrows just chatter, chatter, chatter and fly which way and that chasing each other. There will be a sparrow on a tree branch, and another sparrow will land on the branch a few higher, and immediately the sparrow on the lower branch will start chirping up a storm at the other sparrow. The sparrow on the higher branch will talk trash right back, and these two go at it for at least a minute. Finally the sparrow on the lower branch will attack the other sparrow, and so they flutter around in the air chasing each other all while still making racket. I've maybe gotten like 6 hours of sleep, which is usually fine, except for the fact they wake me up at 5:30 in the morning. If they woke me up at 7:30AM, I'd be perfectly fine with that cause thats when I get up anyways for breakfast, but no, they start 5 minutes after the sunrise. On top of all this, there's a bird nest somewhere close to my balcony(yes, I have a balcony), and if the sparrows have a lull in the fighting or they take it somewhere else, I got baby birds making the same noise over and over again. The thing that beats all of the sparrows fighting and the baby birds chirping, is when the mother bird lands on my balcony and starts chirping at the babies at which they are constantly answering back. Out of all the things I thought I'd be missing in Japan such as cheap beef, generous portions, ranch dressing, and real chocolate and candy, my fiance, the thing I miss the most is robins and mourning doves. If I happen to wake up to those, they're pleasant to listen to and usually drop me right back to sleep. Sure we have sparrows in the US, but none anywhere around that I sleep. Anyone else might ask, "well why don't you wear ear plugs?". Well, as it stands, my alarm clock is my iPod and they're hooked up to my headphones. My headphones are only so loud, but it's loud enough for me to hear it. It's not like my 2.1 speaker system I would usually hook them up to and could potentially crank those puppies up loud enough to shake my house/dorm. If I wear earplugs and can't hear my alarm clock, things will just get screwed up, like being late for the bus. When I figure out what I'm finally going to decide to do, I'll let you know how it goes. What I need is a supersoaker, if anyone wants to ship me one from the states, I'll use that my entire trip here, and then just give it to Nozomi before I leave.

/endrant

Ok, back to Golden Week, Part 2. For Monday, I went digging for clams with Kiyoko, her daughter Yuuko, Yuuko's husband, and their 2 daughters Yuri and Yuna. We left around 11 AM, got there about 25-30 minutes later, and unpacked the van. I had decided to wear my slip on shoes, which had nice rubber soles that would protect my feet. I couldn't go into the river, so I just stayed on the bank. The bank was pretty muddy and wet, riddled with mussels, rocks, and whatever else.



Didn't take a whole lot a pictures here cause I was too absorbed in finding some clams with the rest of them. All and all, I found 12 clams on the riverbank, which isn't too bad for my first time, I wasn't able to get where the higher concentration of them were cause of my shoes, but I still had fun. I found quite a few crabs, most about the size of my thumb, a few bigger, but I did manage to find one crab the size of my hand. We kept that one for eating later on. For lunch we had onigiri(rice balls) and some vegetables. They were so tasty, and I had my 1.5L bottle of C.C. Lemon, that stuff is so good. Yuna and Yuri get a kick out of it every time they see me have a bottle of that stuff, mostly cause if you drink anything straight out of a large bottle, it really impresses the Japanese and Chinese. You have to remember the size of the drinks you get with a McDonalds Value Meal is no bigger than a can of soda here. After lunch, we dug for more clams, but that came to an end around 3 pm. We packed up and started heading back to what I thought was going to be Nagayo. Instead, we stopped at the beach along the way so Yuuko's husband could wash the clams in the sea. While he did that, I had some fun skipping rocks and Yuna and Yuri had fun watching, they tried a couple of times, but only Yuna could skip a rock once. I took some nice pictures, and I even found some jellyfish that had washed up on the beach. First time I had actually been to a beach and found jellyfish. Here are some pictures of where we stopped at.



After the beach, we went to FamilyMart and picked up some snacks to tide us over till we got back to Nagayo. Yuuko's husband, Toshi Hiro bought me some Ashahi beer and icecream. I saw an interesting car at the FamilyMart and I took a few pictures, I've never seen soemthing like it before.



We ate our icecream and drank our beer on the way back to Nagayo as Yuuko drove. We stopped at the grocery store on the way back in to pick up some stuff for dinner. After we got home, it was just a nice relaxing evening at the house. On Tuesday, I did pretty much nothing except lounge around the house,wrote some postcards to coworkers,relaxed, and took a nap. See you guys next time, school starts up again tomorrow, Japanese and cinema, whoo!